To say Ford made some questionable design decisions with the S197 Mustang is an understatement. Here are some ‘WTF’-inducing things I’ve found in a month of ownership and repair.

The door handle rods are a threaded rod that is CLAMPED in place by a soft plastic fitting which inevitably slips and causes floppy loose external door handles. Re-aligning the pushrod only temporarily fixes the problem.

Plastic. Thermostat. Housing.

Running hot coolant through the throttle body for “de icing”. All it does it heat up your intake charge. Was removed in 2006 because Ford realized they were idiots

Everything about the radiator assembly. Sure! Let’s just TANGLE the lower mounts in A/C hardlines to make getting the radiator in and out as difficult as possible! Oh, also a trans cooler. Put one of those in there with 1/2" of clearance to get a comically small ratcheting wrench in.

Exhaust harmonics make the whole car shake at 1600rpm. Ford obviously knew about this because they haphazardly welded a couple pounds of weight onto the MUFFLER in order to “fix” it. It didn’t work.

Taking off the axleback requires partially removing the midpipe because the slip fitting faces rearwards, and the exhaust hangars face frontwards, each preventing you from removing the other. Brilliant.

Why the hell does the V6 have a one-piece driveshaft and the V8 a two-piece?

Stunningly poorly designed brackets for the hydraulics that operate the convertible top. The whole assembly is held together by one bolt with no loctite and only a quarter inch of threads. Failure of this makes the hydraulic cylinder smash into and damage the seatbelt mechanism.

Exceptionally poor shaping of some of the door panel pieces. They don’t even come close to fitting snug in their place

Coin holder right above a 12v socket. It’s a known issue that change can fall out of the coin holder and land in the socket, which is oriented so that you can’t tell if something is in it without a mirror. Mine had a penny and a dime stuck in it when I got the car.

That’s all I can think of right now. Even after going through it with a fine-toothed comb and putting in a new engine I never had so many “WTF why did they do this?” moments with the Civic. I haven’t worked on the Miata enough to comment.